Blue Steel was a real band in 1980. Don’t think they had any hits. I remember 2 songs “Bulldog” and “Roll one up and smoke it down” their music was similar to the Eagles
Saw an unknown Chris Deburgh open for Eddie Money, he had a few hits a year or 2 later.
KISS at Oakland, 1978: I had a whole bunch of plastic mailing tube caps (like little mini-frisbees) that I put the KISS logo on with fluorescent marker. I stuffed them into a camera case and, somehow, was allowed to bring them in to the show.
During the intermission (after a great set by Bob Seger) I pulled my camera case out and tossed the little KISS mini-frisbees out to the crowd. For the rest of the intermission before KISS came on the air inside the arena was filled with them. For some reason I didn’t bother to save one but I do have a small container of the confetti from the finale of the show.
Not a music concert, but while in Boston I got to see the latest Adam Sandler comedy tour. He had several openers but Norm MacDonald (who wasn’t part of the tour) started off the show for that one night only.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Weekend Update on SNL but Norm put all the other comics to shame. By far the funniest of the night and the funniest I’ve ever seen in person.
This reminded me, when I saw Cheap Trick, at the end of the show Rick Nielsen grabbed a massive handful of guitar picks and threw them out to the audience. I did get one, but at the end of the day it was just a guitar pick without the band name, and I threw it away.
Not at the concert, but on my way to see Van Halen in January 1992 in Dallas. Was flying from Little Rock to Dallas on a Southwest flight. Sitting across the aisle from me and a friend was Connie Hamzy, of Grand Funk Railroad fame. She happened to be going to the concert as well. She asked if we had back stage passes, we said that unfortunately not. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a polaroid of herself flashing her tits. She says just show that to the roadies and say that we are friends of hers, and we should be able to get backstage.
Didn’t work.
I saw The Pretenders at Caldwell College in NJ, and the drummer did a trick I hadn’t seen before or since. While keeping the beat, he kept bouncing one stick off the snare head, into the crowd as a souvenir, and then reached into his bag for another - must have been a dozen or so.
I also saw King Sunny Ade at the Pier in NYC and saw another unusual drummer event. As they ended the first set, the band slowly went back stage (there were about 22 of them). There was one talking drum player who was having so much fun, he just kept going, all alone, for about 5 minutes, with this enormous smile on his face as the crowd roared in approval.
AFAIK, he’s always done that.
While listening to this, you can read the comments. Both are quite entertaining.
My favorite band, The Dead Milkmen, finally came to Cleveland after more than a decade to play the Halloween show for a college radio station. The show was in a creepy rundown theater that I’d never been to before (and I’ve been to most local venues). There was a costume contest to half of the crowd was in costume. There were also like 5 opening bands, and this is a college radio festival type thingy so they weren’t high quality bands. I politely suffered through them for about 2 hours.
Then the Milkmen came on! And the power went out 
The band played “Punk Rock Girl” while banging on stuff and walking through the audience. The power never came back. We all had to go home.
They played live on air at the radio station that night, which was cool of them but I still didn’t get to see a live Milkmen show. Not until they came back 3 years later to a proper venue with proper power 
The last time I saw B.B. King he looked right at me, smiled, and tossed a pick. It spun through the air and landed in my open palm. Kismet.
A teenager in a motorized wheelchair was down the aisle from me with his parents. He told me it was the coolest thing he’d ever seen happen. I handed him the pick, because what else could I have done.
Well, not really during the concert. But before the concert.
Back when I was in high school my friend and I went to see Yngwie Malmsteen play at a small venue down the street from where I lived. The place was called The Bus Stop, located about 10 miles south of Dayton, Ohio. Talas opened for them. I just looked it up – the date was July 3, 1985.
We got there about five hours before the concert started, just to hang out. We were inside, just standing around, watching the roadies set up the equipment. There was no security, and there were only a couple other audience members there at the time. During sound check Yngwie was running around the place, jumping up and down on the furniture, while doing lightning-fast arpeggios on his guitar. He seemed to be having a good time.
My friend and I went outside to get some fresh air. It was then that we ran in to Billy Sheehan. (He was playing in Talas, not Yngwie’s band.) He was just standing there with his Fender Precision strapped to him. After talking with him for a few minutes my friend asked Billy if he could show him a new bass he bought. So the three of us went out to my friend’s car, where my friend showed Billy his bass. (I forget what kind it was. But I do remember it had an aluminum neck.) We then went back inside the venue to hang out some more. It was then that Yngwie’s guitar tech approached us, gave us some money, and asked if we could purchase some guitar pics for Yngwie. So we went to the local music store and purchased some. I remember that were heavy gauge pics.
The concert eventually started. I’m guessing there weren’t more than 100 people in attendance. And I swear, they all looked like guitar teachers… they just stood quietly, and seemed to be intensely studying Mr. Malmsteen’s techniques.
Quite surreal looking back.
I was confused for a minute or two: why would he send you out to buy pictures of guitars?
Fun stories!
In the mid 2000’s Los Lobos was playing at FM Gardens amphitheater an intimate setting for about 2500.
Outdoors, it starts raining, the band keeps playing people keep dancing and then the audience was invited up on stage to get out of the rain and the band played on and the audience on stage kept dancing with the band. It was quite a moment.
I also love The Dead Milkmen.
In 1986 I was a college freshman at the University of Cincinnati. I went to see them at Bogart’s, even though at the time I wasn’t all that familiar with them.
I got there a little early and was hanging out by the front entrance. There was a guy next to me who was talking to a couple other people. By the way he was talking, he sort of sounded like he was in the band. So I asked him, “So, are you a member of The Dead Milkmen?” He said, “Yea.” I then asked, “So what instrument do you play?” (Yes, I am now incredibly embarrassed for asking such questions.) He gave me a funny look and said, “The kazoo.” It was Dean Sabatino.
Ahh… picks. 
I still have my Gene Simmons pick from a KISS concert back in the late 70s. Gene and Paul had long strips of tape attached to their mic stands with picks stuck to the tape, and every so often would flick their pick into the crowd then peel another off their tape strip and continue playing. Every time they did that, it was like throwing chum to sharks, there was a mad scramble for the picks. At some point Gene tossed one that landed right at my feet, and it was like nobody else even saw it, so I just picked it up.
I watched about 30 minutes, and read the comments, and it was quite entertaining. You could probably do a whole thread on mismatched concerts, for example the time I saw the Waitresses open for Oingo Boingo (they managed to resist getting booed off stage for a good 30 minutes, but finally gave up).
Yeah, I remember for a couple of years it was common for a comedian to open for a couple of hard rock bands. Often unlisted, so the stage lights come up, everyone starts screaming, expecting to bang their heads to ThundarrMussel, and nope, sorry, it’s Chuckie McChuckle, voted the best improvisational impressionist in the tri-county area…
I mean, even if it was a hilarious act, exactly zero people in the audience were in a mood to laugh.
But the promoters were probably thrilled to have an opener that wants/needs/gets, what, a thousand dollars AND has no equipment that needs to be set up before the show and broken down before the main act can take the stage.
Elton John’s drummer Nigel Olsson met a local girl here and married her and lived here for a while (Raleigh) A friend saw him in a Ferrari a few times. They are divorced but she still goes by Olsson. Sells Fords last I heard
Do magicians count as concerts?
I went to see Penn & Teller and they had a jazz band as their opening act. When the opening act was finished, the double bass player put on a jacket, changed his glasses, put his hair in a pony tail and started the main show with his partner Teller.
Nobody in the audience had realized that Penn was playing in the opening band.